Home
by subtextual
Summary: Slightly AU. "So when the knocks come they echo in the way that silence echoes, in the way longing does too. It echoes like dead sound echoes against wood that knows no laughter, or love, or what it means to be a home."


**Title: **Home  
**Authors: **sub_textual and panda_shi  
**Notes: **From an RP circa 2009. Slightly AU. Iruka is panda_shi's; Kakashi is sub_textual's.  
**Warning: **This piece is extremely dense and highly literary - it is not for everyone. If you do not have familiarity with stream of consciousness or nonlinear narratives found in high modernism and postmodernist writing, you may find this piece to be inaccessible and difficult to understand. .

* * *

It is the urge to set things right, the urge to fix things, undo the damage, comfort, give and take back what he does not mean that gives Iruka's step a purpose. Determination comes with each step, as fear comes with each breath; this walk is not easy.

He'd taken this walk before so many times. It's familiar, but the path is different and changed, now. Back then, it had been quiet dinners and pleasant soaks in the onsen, nights spent either in each other's arms or sliding against each other's bodies, where no words were needed, where Kakashi's heart had been home even at his weakest. When Iruka's fingers traced the face the world did not know and had not seen, when they threaded through hair, held a hand, sometimes even both. Even when the illusion had dissipated and there had been distance between them, Iruka never let go. And he knows that Kakashi never really did either.

(Even when Kakashi was so close to death, when he bled and his heart spoke in the haze of the sickness that nearly took him away, you knew that he loved you. Knew that you held his heart as much as he held yours.)

The distance had been there back then. But not like _this_.

This is Kakashi stepping away. This is Kakashi wounded in a way he does not deserve to be. Because under that mask, and in the depth of that eye, Iruka knows what the world does not see, what the world does not understand. One look and two words had been enough to rip the breath out of Iruka, to have his lungs constrict and pass through his ribs by a force he cannot even begin to understand. It is like plummeting straight for an endless pit and he does not know if he'll make it out of this fall intact.

It still echoes in his mind how Kakashi had been silent. It was a warning siren or a flat line signifying the lack of a pulse. The dread that followed after hearing that long dragging absence of noise consumes him, blinds him with tears that don't prickle behind his eye lids yet; though they are there, gathering under the weight of the crushing guilt over the silence Kakashi throws his way.

He knows what that silence means. It's as good as goodbye. It had been betrayal and it's by Iruka's hands. It is a look that Iruka never wants to see on his face because it is a look that Kakashi should never wear. It is out of place, wrong, scarring. Iruka sees beyond the mask and that face is seared in to his mind permanently and one that is enough to bring him to his knees.

But he does not fall.

Instead, Iruka has spent half the day panicking inwardly while searching for some herbs in a daze, and the other half preparing himself for a confrontation. He should go tell him, he should go tell Kakashi that he did not mean it face to face. He should remedy that silence, explain himself, he deserves that chance at least, doesn't he?

Because he _knows_Kakashi and it is not something he can easily forget or erase.

(You tried that before and look what a mess it made. Look what damage you've inflicted on the man you claim to love? Do you remember how the tears streamed down his cheeks? You carried everything inside you, under your skin, the image of how he sprawled in bed and read in the evenings, how he sat across from you at the table - miso, eggplant, fish and rice, shochu, fruit because he does not like sweet things - how he chews and what he picks to eat first. You know the amount of salt and spice required. You know how he walked, how he spoke, how he _laughed_ and _smiled_ at _you._ **With you.** You know what it felt to be in his arms, to hold him and to welcome him, to wake up to him and breathe everything that defined him, all earth and fields and Konoha. _Home_. Because even after it was all gone, it wasn't over.

You still prepare what he liked the most, still liked. How can you not when it's already a part of you and your habit?)

_But you're not together. There isn't a you and him anymore. What do you need a chance for? You've done it now._

He tells himself it doesn't matter, tells himself that it is important to be honest, to stop this madness he's putting himself through. He needs his closure. He wants his chance to explain. Because he knows - he _feels_- that the basket of fruit he found this morning was Kakashi's doing. Oranges and peaches and all that Kakashi knows he likes.

Iruka stops before the door and he hesitates, because he is carrying in his hand a box that holds an offering, much like that basket of fruit. Except he is going to give it to him instead of leaving it there. He steels himself, takes long breaths and - _just do it!_ - knocks firmly. The wood seems to resist his knuckles, and the echoes of each knock drown out all other sounds. There is no wind here, blowing through tree branches and winter leaves - just the quiet thunder of what sounds to him like pounding. He realizes only a minute later that it's his heart.

The knocks go all the way through the house, which is empty and too large for just one man.

This house is foreign and distant, the rooms empty and unlived in; no shoes are lined up in the genkan, no pot simmers on the stove or over the irori, where the ashes had long gone cold, like the ones in the hearth. The clothing line is lonely, stretched taut without the burden of uniforms hanging out to dry, side-by-side. Winter is here and holds the house around it, instead of the house holding it outside of itself, like houses ought to do.

When the knocks come, they disturb the solitude and the silence of cold empty rooms that are not lived in.

Its owner has not tried to make it into a home. Home is a place that is far away, in another world where winter is still cold, but the leaves stay on the trees and snow never lasts. It melts before it hits the ground. Never lingers, because the people in that village and their wills of fire always chase it away. Konoha is too warm for snow, for winter. For cold rooms that are as empty as the rest of this world.

So, when Kakashi fell asleep in one world, and woke up one day in this one, in a place that was not home but resonated with the memory of what Konoha had been, he picked a house that stood in the same place the empty one now does - hemmed in against the river by trees that hide it from sight and make it difficult to find. No visible path lines the way to his door, which is beyond another set of stone walls that fence it in. You'd have know exactly what you are looking for in order to find it.

It's easier to get lost looking.

But Iruka knows this path because that house had been his, too. He had walked it a hundred times with Kakashi that summer - with the sun blisteringly hot, baking the ground until it cracked and they had to shower it with water jutsus to save the crops. They knew the house as it knew them. Its floors felt the weight of their bodies when they made love in the mornings and slept wrapped up around each other at night; the wooden beams tasted the sweat of their persistence and the strain of insatiable need - they were always hungry for each other, stripping off uniforms and reaching for bare skin and scars. They could be truly honest when they weren't wearing uniforms and titles on top of their skin, when there wasn't something the village needed from them, some kind of duty to perform, another mission. When it was just this: two men lying together because they loved one another.

The house belonged to them, and they belonged to each other. It was that simple, once upon a time, that was not so long ago, but feels like forever.

This house doesn't seem to belong to anyone. Not even Kakashi, who lives in it. He hasn't taken ownership of it, because it isn't home.

There was a sycamore tree in the back he once sat under with Iruka. There were fingers in his hair then and a smile on his face with no cloth to cover it. He decided that day that home didn't have to be a place. Because Iruka wasn't a place, but Kakashi never felt more at home than when he looked and saw Iruka smiling back at him. So even when they woke up again and they found the world had changed, that the house which held so many memories had disappeared into thin air, and a new one had been built over the one they shared, Kakashi wasn't too concerned.

Things were complicated between them - fucked up, even. But Iruka was still there and still smiled at him from time to time. And though those smiles were more careful, and something pressed upon the curve, sometimes something soft and warm shone through. Something which made Kakashi feel a warmth inside his chest that reminded him home was still here, even if it didn't belong to him. He could be outside of it, and watch it, protect it. Being apart was safer than being close.

And maybe in time, he would come home.

Close the door and this time, he would be the one wrapping his arms around Iruka, instead of watching him from a distance. Like earlier tonight when he dropped off a basket of fruit on his back porch. Iruka was stepping out of the onsen, his skin glistening in the moonlight and Kakashi felt a feeling go through him like electricity - it was one he knew well, because he'd carried it around in his chest for months.

And he thought he could go on carrying it. That maybe, Iruka would wait for him.

Except he didn't.

Iruka's moved on and Kakashi hasn't moved at all.

So when the knocks come they echo in the way that silence echoes, in the way longing does too. It echoes like dead sound echoes against wood that knows no laughter, or love, or what it means to be a home. So it is not a home, this place. And it can never be, because Kakashi sat and watched as his home became another's. The door has closed on him, and he doesn't have a key any longer.

This house is just a house.

It does not belong to him.

Iruka doesn't either.

Kakashi feels him before he sees him, knows that chakra signature better than any other. It's impossible for him to miss - the warmth coming through the door. And when he opens it, Kakashi's not sure what Iruka is doing here now, standing on his doorstep with what looks like a bento box in his hand.

He stares at Iruka for a long moment. Looks and feels his lungs constrict, something painful twisting in the pit of his stomach. He is not ready to do this. Not ready to face him. And letting go should be so easy, because it's what Kakashi does. It's what he's good at doing because he doesn't know how to hold on.

So he closes his door before Iruka can open his mouth and say something that will make Kakashi want to keep his door open when he knows Iruka's is closed to him.

And the impact slams fast and hard, brutal like a force of nature. A bullseye, that goes right for Iruka's chest and knocks him back, a vulnerable point. It paralyzes him from the shock of the impact, the pain that hasn't kicked in yet because it's too much to take in, too much to absorb all at once.

It is a well aimed attack, a sure kill, no chances of missing, no chance for survival, worthy of the man who holds lightning in the palm of his hand.

Kakashi has done many things to him, but he has never, _ever_ slammed a door shut in his face. Not like this. Not without a word, not with _silence_.

This is Iruka's house. This is his heart, his soul, his _home_. This is the place which holds his dreams and everything he wants for himself but will can never find the courage to pursue. He had hoped. He had been patient, holding himself together and thinking, maybe tomorrow. Until he lost count. Until everything blurred to something that even he doesn't know what to call it anymore.

His body catches up to the blow, right there before a door that had been home, to the reality that leaves his stomach churning and a bitter sick taste that he wants out of his mouth. The vile aftertaste lingers and with it comes the pull of nausea. It comes quick and for just a moment before rage consumes and blinds, dimming out everything else.

_"Fine!"_

It continues to crush and grind what he thought he had, what little he had of the home that was real but not, a home that he treasured and cherished.

_"Fine! Fine! Be that way! That's what you're good at, isn't it?"_

It makes him hoarse, rubs his throat raw and it is louder than the slam of the door. He denies it and accepts it, fingers tightening around the box in his hands till his knuckles go white and the container cracks from the force and goes flying with a sharp clatter against the wood, making a mess on the floor. It is a last minute struggle, like the light of an exploding star, where everything burns brightest before snuffing out and leaving nothing but an expanse of black.

"Running away?"

(Once upon a time, home was filled with laughter and a life that you shared with him. Where it had been a way of living and not just getting by. You are yourself when you are with him. You _lived life_for what it was and you understood just how much a person can know contentment and happiness. It was right there everyday, between your hands, in your arms, in the air you breathe and the lips you kissed.)

Iruka burns with the anger, hot and bright and reaching for the sky. He feels Kakashi's presence behind that door, hears him, smell him - so close and now completely invisible from how the distance stretches between them. Three feet is three hundred worlds apart.

"Tell me you don't want me! Tell me you don't care and I'll walk away!"

Iruka breathes in once - a sharp inhale.

And the fire is snuffed out by the wind that whispers of a memory that is now long gone, a memory he does not deserve to hold. One can't really hold something if it was taken away the first place; air cannot be held. What he sees before him is not home where walls are imprinted with memories of their love and touches, where the ground is warm like their souls and laughter. Home is no longer a body that brought together two separate things to become one.

Home is now an empty field, like the aftermath of a battle that leaves behind the reeking stench of decay and ruins. There is no laughter, no warm breeze or sunshine. Just smoke and dark clouds that swirl and build up a frigid storm to wash everything away.

Iruka breathes out and everything blurs, as if he were looking through a torrential fall of rain. "End it and say it to my face if you're man enough!"

His voice cracks as he resists the urge to turn away - _walk away! Walk away! Walk away! Just walk away and don't look back!_.

(It's just a house now, as it should have been when everything went back to what should have been normal. You no longer carry the right to call it home, you no longer have a key because it was taken away from you. There is no point standing before a door you know you can no longer enter.)

The wind that had been holding its breath as it listened suddenly remembers to exhale. Winter comes with it in an icy blast. And a storm gathers just beyond the door that holds winter inside of the house just as much as it holds it outside of itself. Where Kakashi stands in the midst of it, feeling the pressure of clouds gathering at his ankles. They want to drag him down, make lightning of him. And when he inhales it goes into his chest where it doesn't belong, a swirl of wind and hurricane ripping up at his roots and making it difficult to stay grounded. Iruka's words are like rocks slamming against him and Kakashi doesn't understand what the hell it is that Iruka wants, anyway. That Iruka must think to himself Kakashi is something pathetic enough to pity, which is why he has carried himself all the way here with a bento box in his hand.

That alone had been enough insult. But the words - they were not what Kakashi expected, stinging nettles that dance through the cracks of the house and settle into his skin. It occurs to him then that Iruka wants him to do this, to be the one to articulate the very justification for what he did, right there in plain view for Kakashi to see and hear. With his eyes filled with desire and hunger and need, and a flush that Kakashi knows goes down his neck and tints his chest red. Where Kakashi's teeth and tongue once grazed across a heartbeat and where he counted the tiny fine scars that crisscrossed over a collarbone he claimed as his own. The scars belonged to Iruka, and Iruka belonged to him. So the scars were Kakashi's as well. And now someone else's mouth will mark that pulse, feel it under the press of lips. Someone else will count his scars and all Kakashi can do is stand back and wonder what the fuck Iruka is doing here throwing bento boxes at his door and screaming insults instead of with that someone else.

He pulls open the door and levels Iruka with a look that's dark; a look that should _never_be directed at someone he loves because it doesn't just connect, it stabs right through. Kakashi feels anger welling inside of him like the storm that had gone inside him when it shouldn't have and he doesn't know if he can keep it all in.

"What the hell do you want from me, huh?" His voice rises in tone, harsh and cold.

_(This is not the voice he whispered in softly when Iruka lay next to him in bed. When he said, you make me happy, you know that?)_

He opened the door and he shouldn't have, because no sooner are those words are out of his mouth does he realize he now has to face Iruka.

Has to look at him and see the man that once stood in the doorway of a house they once called home, with a smile on his face and something warm in his eyes that made Kakashi feel warm too. Those days had been easy living, working the fields and coming home at night to Iruka. Where their bodies would fit against each other neatly, and they breathed in unison. When Kakashi believed when he listened to Iruka's heart, he knew what it was saying.

_(I love you, I need you, and I will never let you go.)_

He can't press his ear against Iruka's chest now to listen. He doesn't have to because he can already see it, written all over Iruka's face. Something like anger and irritation and a sense of impatience. Like he just can't _wait_for Kakashi to say the words he wants to hear.

"I saw _everything._"

_(There it is again: that needy expression. Flashing right before Kakashi's eyes.)_

"If you're only here because you feel guilty, I don't need your pity." The words are ground out between his teeth and Kakashi takes a step forward, clenching his jaw. Like he might just grab Iruka by the collar and throw him off his front step.

And just as quickly as it is there, it's gone - emotion doesn't just drain, but snaps its way off Kakashi's face. Snaps off at the hinges and leaves something empty and blank and carefully indifferent as he raises a brow. Levels Iruka with a look that is as flat as it is careless.

"Isn't there somewhere better you could be? I'm sure your new lover would _enjoy_your company far more. I hear he's a nobleman."

_And he could treat you better than I ever could. Give you more than I could give. I never did deserve you after all. So this isn't that much a surprise, is it. I should've known it was coming. Should've smelled it in the air - rain in the distance, waiting to fall. And there you are, finally, walking away. So I'll stand back and watch and let you go. Because letting go is easier than holding onto something that I never should've tried to hold on to at all. To a memory that wasn't a memory and a reality that never was. All because I wanted to see you smile the way you did like you did back then. When you would whisper my name and put your hands upon my face and say you loved me. And maybe it was because I never said the words. They were always there pressing down my tongue. All that time went by but they never made it out. So maybe you didn't know what I have always known - that I loved you then as I love you now and I don't know how to stop myself. _

It's never easy letting go. But it's so much harder to hold on. Because when you hold on, the loss feels that much greater. The absence, that much larger. And you are there, alone. Standing with air sliding between your fingers. Wondering why you even tried.

(But you don't hold empty air between your fingers, because in the days that you doubt what lies between him and you, you remember these words. You remember his fall from grace, remember how he looked at you back then when he made you sign a vow that you swore to keep.)

_Promise me...that you'll be happy._

Iruka flinches when thunder strikes without mercy, unleashing a wrath against an open sea that he swallows and inhales because the air is thick and charged. It is difficult to breathe, to stand after a strike so brutal that he wants nothing more than to close his eyes and go to sleep, leave this madness behind, heal from the burns and scabs and watch them scar, until the storm passes down there at the bottom of the sea where it is quiet and cold and lightning cannot reach him; only its echoes. The crack of that lightning charge is loud and roaring in his ears, so deafening that he blinks quickly - again and again - to ward away the lingering hum.

(Does he understand how he makes you happy? Does he understand how you value the small things he does; a hand to your back, when he embraces you while you're busy, how he teases and laughs against your neck and how he sleeps so comfortably in your arms? Can he grasp the depth of how much that makes you happy? Can he not see clearly with one eye? Can he not see how you've waited all this time?)

It jars him to be looked at this way, with all that anger and all that black venom and thunder that picks at the seams some more. He thinks to himself, _how dare he? How dare he accuse me of such a thing? When he has done the same thing without a second thought! With the same person! When he knows - when he's seen - that I have never looked at any other person. That I have stayed faithful to him even __**now**__._

And he cannot stop the waves of the sea that wants to lash out and reach for the sky and and rage back. Iruka looks at Kakashi like he's a hypocrite, looks at him with so much anger at this unfairness, at the ludicrousness of his words, at Kakashi thinking that he is that shallow, that _uncaring_. Accusing him that he cannot be faithful! And craving status!

Iruka knows he tried and is still trying. He knows that because he returned the answer to that demand with _I promise_. He's spent every day since then fighting for it, praying to the gods that they'll spare Kakashi one more time. He's tried and tried to make Kakashi comfortable, give him what he can even if it's a simple act of camaraderie or a gesture from a friend, a greeting or a smile. Countless times, he's forgiven him, countless times, he swallows the blame and his mistakes and Kakashi's own, and doesn't say anything. Because Kakashi doesn't mean it.

Again, he swallows it because there is a balance between them. If one is loud, the other is quiet. This time, it is Iruka who lowers his voice. It is Iruka who holds together the pillars of the pier that are about to collapse and drown in the sea.

Iruka knows what he saw too, and what it can mean. He knows that his judgment is clouded and that is why he is standing here, holding himself together with knuckles as white as the coat of the noble he is being accused of taking a fancy to, wanting answers.

(You've given him everything and now you do not know what more you can dig out from yourself to give, when Kakashi holds everything in his hands.)

"Do you still want me, Kakashi?"

That is not what his voice is supposed to sound like. He is not supposed to sound tired or angry or even _hopeful_ . His voice is not supposed to shake with the sea he is _barely_holding back. Because he did not argue back when he would have, he did not shout back or yell or point or rage with the temper he is well known for.

Iruka stays silent and he looks at Kakashi like he's seeing him for the first time through the film of salt water that lines his eyes and threatens to spill over.

Those eyes do more than words ever can. Iruka has eyes that are warm and filled with a kind of light Kakashi always looked at and felt like he could never touch. He could look at it and see it, marvel at the way it shines and warms everything else, too. But touch? No, that was too dangerous. They were always so open, those eyes, looking out at the world and letting the world see in. Not closed like Kakashi's, with the light all punched-out, only looking out but never letting anyone see in. Seeing the hurt there welling up in Iruka's eyes doesn't mute the light - if anything, it intensifies it, makes it that much easier to see in. It sends a deep, painful throb through Kakashi's chest that sends the storm spiraling into silence.

Just like that, the clouds fall from the sky and drop to the bottom of a canyon that closes up around them, leaving only the cold feeling of winter that had gone into his chest and shouldn't have. Winter isn't made to swirl around the insides of a man and give him frostbite on the insides.

Kakashi falls silent for a long moment as his eye drops away from Iruka's face. He can't look at him like this, can't stand to see how Iruka looks at him with that kind of broken expression that Kakashi caused, like he did the day they woke up in the middle of a storm. After the spell had broken and Kakashi looked at Iruka and told him, "You need to get up." And get out.

He had done that. Had given up on them back then even when Iruka had begged. He looked Iruka right in the eye and said it wasn't real even when he knew it was as real as he knows the heart beating in his chest is real. Because they hadn't been given a choice and there were all these memories in their heads that were never and could never be real. But that love - that love was real, and Kakashi had lied about it. Kept pushing Iruka away until Iruka finally said, "Take everything I know of you, of what you are, who you are, what I saw, what I know, my promises and my love for you. Just wipe it clean!"

And Kakashi did. Thinking that he'd be better off without them.

Iruka shouldn't even remember, and wouldn't have remembered, if Kakashi never got sick and fell out of that fucking tree.

So it would make sense that Iruka would choose someone else over him. Another man, who is dignified and noble and wears expensive silk around his neck and carries himself with so much grace. Wears his face open for everyone to see. Who had the strength to confess his affection to a man he had only just met in a field picking herbs, when Kakashi had not even done that for Iruka once. Had never looked Iruka in the eye and said, I love you.

Because he never once had the strength to.

There's a strange thickness in Kakashi's throat, like the knot that twisted itself inside his chest had crawled up and wedged itself right inside of it. He swallows past that feeling once, and then again, barely feeling the crescents of his nails digging into the leather of his glove.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he hears himself say, but his voice sounds all wrong. Not emotionless and indifferent enough.

He tries to tell himself that it's better this way. That Iruka will be happier without him. He won't need to have the guilt and the burden of having Kakashi holding him back. Or keeping him from moving on with his life. He doesn't need to hear the truth. Doesn't need to hear the words pressing behind Kakashi's teeth but won't make their way out. They go something like this: I've never stopped wanting you and I never will. And I have never wanted anyone more.

But the thing about love that's funny is how it works. Because when you love and have loved and will keep on loving, a part of you never wants to let go. A part of you wants to hold onto that love forever because it is the only thing you can truly call your own. Especially when no other part of your life has truly belonged to you. But you see, this thing about love, and the way it works, is when you truly love, you have to learn how to let go.

And there's nothing else Kakashi's better at than doing just that.

He's let go of Iruka once before, and he knows he can do it again.

And what is strange about the whole thing is that Iruka understands. He doesn't need words this time, he doesn't need to beg or argue or even reason with Kakashi. Because the answer is right there, in how Kakashi sets his jaw, or how he silences the storm that rages with in or how low his voice is. Iruka is sinking, being pulled lower and lower by the force of the sea that wants to swallow him amidst all this storm, salt water in his face and in his eyes and lungs and ears.

But the urge to survive, to remain afloat kicks in and is still strong.

Kakashi says that it doesn't matter. Iruka thinks everything matters; _how do you know when you don't willingly try? How do you know, when you're running away again, like last time? A coward's way out, not knowing, not confronting. Not speaking!_

(And you think you can fix this mess of a man, think that you can help him, heal him, show him what it means to live. But how can you fix things when you've got barriers hindering you? When you can't reach out further because those walls, that mask, is standing in the way? How can Kakashi fix himself, fix things around him and grab the choices lying before him like the open fields ready to be harvested? How can he even see them with all those things getting in the way? In his eyes, like the rain. Like the strip of cloth that hides his eye?)

Iruka understands and his voice comes out tired, a wasted effort that he feels is useless. Because apparently, the past repeats itself. Here lies before him what once did months ago. And with it, the disappointment and gaping ravine that comes when someone just can't give what you want. Even if it's just a chance to explain or to correct a mistake.

"Why do you always do this?"

Iruka knows the answer, he hears it in his head as soon as the question leaves his lips in a whisper that is as thick as the film of salt in his eyes. He can see the answer _very clearly_even if he's got the sea before him, blue and cold and dark now. He shouldn't be asking questions that he already knows the answer to.

Fingers uncurl at his sides and his shoulders sag and he just shakes his head. The storm is too strong, there's no winning against it. It's all just _hopeless_.

Iruka turns around, leaves it behind, forget it because the biggest part of loving someone is acceptance. And Iruka accepts _this_ . He _accepts_ that Kakashi cannot do this, accept that he's too afraid or too lost or too broken. He _accepts_that Kakashi wants him to get up and leave. To forget this because the man sees himself as is a monster who'll only break Iruka at some point. Iruka understands this very well; but Kakashi doesn't.

_I will not interfere._

( _Promise me...that you'll be happy._)

And he can't accept it but he knows he must, even if everything just spills out and he's biting his lower lip to keep quiet. Because how can he even honor that promise when he's walking away from it?

(You cannot see, can you? You cannot see why I keep coming back, can you? You don't understand.)

Kakashi doesn't need to speak.

Iruka _understands_ .

Kakashi doesn't.

He doesn't know why he hears so much resignation in Iruka's voice. Like he was hoping for another answer, something that could give him hope. Or why the light went dim in his eyes a moment before he turned, like the way Iruka looked at him the night he held him under the sycamore tree in the back of the house they called their home, and made a promise Kakashi knew he could never keep. The light went dim in his eyes then, when Kakashi made him promise, forced him to press his love down and his heart too. A promise like that would've been impossible to keep, and maybe that was why the light went dim.

He'd seen it go out completely, just once. When he looked into Iruka's eyes with Sharingan spinning, spinning, spinning the memories of the two of them away.

When it went dim again, something like panic rises wild into Kakashi's throat. Higher and higher like the feeling in his chest is about to explode out of him and he can't hold it all in anymore. The canyon opens itself up again and that storm comes screaming out of it, all wind and lightning, raging to be released.

A man's body is too small for a storm like that.

And that is something Kakashi doesn't understand. Why he can't just swallow it down, this feeling. Can't let winter ice over and leave everything still and cold and silent like the way the world is silent after a snowfall. When everything is all white and no color exists anymore. Just an endless expanse with no footsteps and you are blind, too, watching the sun reflect off the surfaces and back into you. An endless cold nothing, until you become it too. Because when you are nothing you can feel nothing but the cold numb chill that goes into the deepest parts of you.

But this feeling is something Kakashi just can't shake. Can't swallow down as he watches Iruka walk away. And it is too much, pressing at the edges of his teeth, pressing with so much force, Kakashi has to grit his teeth and ball his hands into fists as the shakes go all the way through him, like he's fighting some kind of unstoppable force of nature that wants its way out of him and just wont stop until it has its way. And it feels like Obito with his hands around Kakashi's heart and he's shaking him with all of his force. Obito is there, screaming at him, saying, tell him, tell him, tell him. You have nothing to lose. You've already lost everything, at least he deserves to know the truth. Obito grabs him from the inside and chokes him up, makes his mouth open and then, there it is. A whisper:

"Because I love you."

It is out of his mouth before he realizes it is and he can't believe that he said those words when he told himself he wouldn't say anything at all. That he would just watch, just let Iruka ago. But love, you see, it's a funny thing. It makes you do all sorts of crazy shit. Like open your mouth and confess and say I love you to a man who doesn't love you anymore. To a man that walks away because there's someone better out there. And you know it but you say it anyway because you can't stop yourself. Because the boy living in your left eye shakes your heart and chokes you up and opens your mouth until those words are out and you can't take them back.

Obito was always too much of an optimist.

Kakashi's cheeks are burning and his chest is burning and he thinks to himself, I've done it now.

Those words, he never said them before when he should've. Never said them when they mattered the most.

"But I know it's too late," he whispers as his shoulders slump and everything goes out of him, along with the will to watch Iruka's back. He doesn't think he can stand here in the doorway of a house that was built over the memory of a place they once called home and watch Iruka walk away from him. Stand here and watch from this place, where Iruka greeted him with a smile on his face and a look in his eye that made Kakashi feel warm; where they were always reaching for skin and scars and losing themselves in each other and claiming and being claimed and loving and being loved; where they fought and made love and screamed and laughed and whispered and cried and dreamed. Oh, how they dreamed back then. Of a quiet life that they could share together, forever. They dared to believe in that during those days together. That silly thing that no one should ever believe in.

But nothing lasts forever. Not dreams or love or even a house that two men once called home. And not the promise Iruka once whispered when he held Kakashi under a sycamore tree in the back of a house that's no longer there.

_"I am not going to leave you. Remember that, Kakashi."_

Kakashi never forgot. And that is why he can't do this anymore. Can't watch Iruka walk away like this.

But Iruka's right there, and he hasn't moved a step. He feels like he's drowning and breathing at the same time.

The storm forces the water to rise, higher and higher, and pressures the currents to spin and spin and spin until everything is laid bare and the ocean floor is visible and lying there with arms outstretched towards the dark sky. Lightning doesn't come with a thunder clap, but only flashes once, illuminating the heavens and everything below on earth. It is brief, quick.

Then it's gone.

The current dies and everything just fills the hole that the storm creates, fills the void, rushing and rushing and flowing and flowing, till it just settles and there's nothing more but wind between the storm clouds and sea, a soft breeze that carries the scent of rain.

And it's warm like a blessing, like a gift that can bring smiles and laughter and arms that reach to embrace the sky.

It's warm like the home Iruka remembers clearly. Warm like the cups of rich tea in the afternoons, or the sunrise against their backs when they lie in bed with their foreheads against each other, or when they laugh or joke or tease against wooden floors and tatami mats or amidst the steam rising and drifting between them in the onsen. It's warm like the home they both serve, where the laughter of children are like bells in summer, where their duty is the same, where their goals are the same, where they protect the same people and protect each other.

Iruka sees Kakashi now, and he looks and feels so small when he's supposed to be big and strong and indestructible. Kakashi shakes under the force of something Iruka knows _too_ well. Trembles in a way a man like him should _never_tremble.

(When he told you that it wasn't real, you felt like your heart froze and crumbled inwards. When he told you, _we didn't have a choice_ , you shook and fell apart then because you already made your choice when he got up and started building all those walls around himself. You knew your choice because you've always been good with making decisions for yourself when you _truly acknowledge_ your instincts, that part of you that you keep _too suppressed_ and _too quiet_. And when he said words that dismissed you, you fell apart and thought you wouldn't be able to stand. And you didn't stand till he took everything away. You took the easy way out. What a mess that had been.)

Love makes you do stupid shit.

Like smile so brightly right after your heart has been crushed, that the salt that pours out of your eyes burn in large, clear drops that hold something no words can describe. And that smile, it cracks, and the salt stings more and flows faster, just as your throat constricts and your lungs squeeze out a sound of relief that is partially a sigh, partially a sob, and partially a laugh.

Iruka bites his lip again, not daring to breathe, thinking it can't be real, that there is no way it could have been.

(You say the words repeatedly, during quiet nights or when he's still sleeping with his nose in your hair. When his arms hold you close to his heart and you see the expression the world doesn't even know of. You tell him then, when you must leave him to start your day, the words that brush against pale skin or against a scar that cuts down an eyelid. You tell him when he's afraid, when he's sad or lacks the strength to hold his own weight. You never did stop telling him because even when he had fallen from grace, when you had to hold your tongue and couldn't speak the words, you still told him anyway, when you held his feverish and shaking hands, and when you brushed fingers against his scalp and when you trimmed the extra length of silver strands. You tell him when you smile, quietly, secretly.)

Kakashi looks like he is shrinking upon himself, falling apart, coming undone and lying in a million broken pieces.

Love really does make you do things without thinking. Because you are picking up the pieces as quickly as your two hands can manage, your strides sure this time and not dragging or lingering like they were earlier.

And you are catching him, and mending the cracks with arms wrapped around broad and defeated shoulders, threading fingers through thick and unruly hair, and pulling him towards a shoulder. You'll do this for him because he can't do it himself. Hide his face, hide him till he's strong enough, till he looks indestructible and big and everything that he _should_be.

Iruka takes the tremors as his own, and swallows it so no one can find it. He holds Kakashi upright, allows himself to be Kakashi's crutch so he doesn't fall face first and hurt more. Because love is about _giving_ that one person _everything you can_even if it kills you, as much as it is about acceptance.

"No."

Iruka closes his eyes and _breathes_the home that he knows well, earth and spice and open fields. It does not matter if the doorstep he's standing on is different from before or if the rooms beyond the door that Kakashi opened look foreign and empty and unlived in.

What Iruka holds in his hands, what he feels under his fingers, _this is home_.

And Iruka _smiles_ like he's _never_smiled before.

"You're just in time."

Relief does not rise slowly, but eviscerates the stomcloud feeling in Kakashi's chest. One minute he had lightning scorching up his insides with winter on the way, snow fighting the feeling of too much rain and smoke from all the burning. With all that fire, snow could never possibly settle and make things calm and cool and white all over. The next, it was gone. Iruka's arms holding him and the smell of Iruka in his nose and the fingers in his hair took it all away. Just like that, the clouds went away with the smoke and the fire. And something warm burst open inside and spilled over.

His chest still feels like it's burning, but it's a good burn. The kind that you hold your hands against to warm yourself.

Kakashi buries his face in the curve of Iruka's neck and breathes, just _breathes_like he's never breathed before, inhaling the scent of pine and warm earth and oranges and the faint sweetness of tea that he's grown to recognize as Iruka. His arms wrap around him, settling where they always did, molding Iruka's body against his own, and something within him tells him never let go. You've let go too many times already. And every time you let go, a part of you goes with it. And sometimes, it's the part that matters the most. The part that you like to ignore and pretend is not there. But it is there, and it will always be here. This love, it's not going anywhere. And you might be able to let go of who you love but how you feel? How do you let go of something like that? It stays with you forever like the guilt and your ghosts and the boy you never stop talking to who lives there too. Inside of you. You can't dig out your love the same way you can't dig them out, either.

Never let go.

He lets out a breath that he had been holding inside for too long a time. A breath he had been holding since that last rainy morning that they shared together. It's almost a broken gasp, as his fingers dig into the fabric of Iruka's vest and clench there. And he tries to gather up the strength to say it again, to say those words, but he's seemed to forgotten how to properly work his jaw to form the syllables.

So he says Iruka's name, instead. And he thinks to himself it sounds close enough.


End file.
